Good science-based medicine should endeavor to isolate variables as much as possible. That is what the entire placebo-controlled trial is about. We cannot make causal conclusion unless the variable of interest is isolated. The problem for CAM proponents is that when you properly isolate the variable that is at the core of their treatment, it doesn’t work. After thousands of clinical trials, for example, acupuncture researchers still have not been able to demonstrate scientifically that acupuncture points mean anything. They do not appear to exist – their own research concludes this. Similarly, there is no “life energy” behind energy medicine, subluxation theory has been essentially disproven, and the principles of homeopathy are demonstrable nonsense.
— Dr. Steven Novella, Science-Based Medicine, An SBM Advocate Goes To Washington, April 5, 2023
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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This reminds me of a ‘debate’ I had on the subject of faith healing with a certain ‘Dr’.
I wonder how much of acupuncture (and lots of big needles, that’s a nope!) is based on the placebo effect?
Complementary and alternative medicines that have been found to work have a name: medicine.
Pharmaceuticals are keeping many millions of us alive and able to live normal much longer lives. Had we lived in past decades, or past centuries our time on earth would have been ‘nasty, brutish and short.’ (said Hobbes, 17thC philosopher.) I live in a country that has social medicine. If carrot juice, acupuncture, drinking urine et al cured all diseases, our doctors would be delighted to use them. Just think of the millions, billions of £££ that Britain’s NHS would save. And that could be spent on other aspects of society, making our country a wonderful place to live in.
I will go to an actual medical doctor if something is wrong with me. Maybe I will play around with a few supplements, but they won’t cure me.
The thing is, people a few generations ago eould have given their right arm for access to the medical advances we have now. Why do people want to go backwards?
Certain ignorant minds despise science, no matter what, because it threatens their beliefs. Therefore any form of science that can be demonstrated to do good, like medical science, is to be demeaned and bashed, even if one has to lie in order to defame it.
World renowned scientist, “Dr.” David Tee, uses his vast scientific knowledge to demolish Dr. Novella’s article:
https://theologyarchaeology.wordpress.com/2023/04/06/if-science-doesnt-prove-it/
Is there anything that Dr. Tee is not an expert on? 🤣🤣
He’s not an expert on not being an expert!
I don’t think its fair to mock the afflicted…..
There has to be a proper latin medical term for “Talking out of one’s ass”
I think the technical term is “loquere ex ano.” 😀
Thank you my esteemed medically qualified friend
LOL.
I am homeopathic. I couldn’t be straight if I tried—or wanted to!
Seriously–I couldn’t be cured of my “gender dysphoria” or other “disorders” (including depression) with herbs, needles, threats, punishments or prayers, whether by me or others. It took doctors and therapists who used proven techniques and substances to allow me to live as I am rather than to kill myself (whether slowly, by addiction and dangerous living or instantaneously, as other LGBTQ people have) by pretending to be someone else.
Oh, and I probably wouldn’t have lived nearly as long as I have (I’m just slightly younger than Bruce) had I not had vaccines, beginning in childhood and throughout my life or the knowledge I have about nutrition (which, I admit, I don’t always follow) and other aspects of healthy living.
Now, I will concede that good health isn’t all about surgeries and pharmaceuticals. Such things as work and other activities one enjoys, and the company of people one loves, are also important. But such things have been shown to help time and time again, and the differences between people’s lives with and without them can be documented–which means, of course, that work, love, hobbies and such are isolatable factors.
In other words, the only worthwhile medicine is that based on replicable results gleaned by using tangible or empirical (in other words, isolatable) substances or methods on verifiable conditions.
Happy Holidays to you, Bruce, Polly and the family ! Doing my usual on a Sunday. Evening this time.
Example here:
I’m a USian whose ancestors came from Western Europe. I live in a greater US metro area with a large population of folks who either emigrated from China/Taiwan/Hong Kong/etc. or are the children of such people. As a result, practitioners of Chinese medicine abound. Over the years, friends/colleagues from that cultural background have encouraged me to try acupuncture a few times for various ailments, and my health insurance actually even covers it. It seems to have worked for them. All it ever accomplished for me was bruises around the needle sites, because I bruise easily.
The thing is, we still don’t understand the placebo effect, and it might be significantly affected by the culture of one’s childhood, culturally-influenced diet, religious environment, a whole lot of other things that are population-sensitive. So even if acupuncture is merely causing a manifestation of the placebo effect in certain individuals, that’s actually a big deal. The placebo effect itself is a damn big deal. If Western medicine could figure out protocols for triggering it reliably, it would revolutionize health care in the West. The problem is, how do you test most hypotheses about it? It’s a very difficult science problem.
Meanwhile, being culturally a Westerner, I need to stick with pharmaceuticals. If anything will work for me, those will (though there are no guarantees).